8. The Story of Human Action

0:00Chapter 8. The Story of Human Action. I should know Human Action very well. I typed 890 pages of it, and after the index was finished, I checked it. Lew was very strict boss, at least with me. Whenever he saw a typing error, he made me redo the whole page, exactly as I had to do at the Delahanty School of Business. Erasing was strictly prohibited there, and so it was with Lew. It is no news to most of my readers that Human Action The English Revised Edition of Nationale Economie, published in Geneva in 1940. Nationale Economie was published in 1980 in a new edition by Philosophia Inc. Munich. The war did great harm to the book. In spite of excellent reviews, it never reached German-speaking countries, and the Swiss publishing firm did not survive the war. In 1942, when we were only partly settled in our new apartment in New York, Lew started planning on a revised English Edition. It was not a translation, since the new book refers much more to American

1:03than to European conditions, and it was greatly enlarged. He worked for many years on it. Each day I could type only a certain number of pages, as my days were filled with many other tasks. That is how I came to live with Human Action as well as with Lew. It was part of my life as well as his, and I shared all the joys and the disappointments that the Human Action meant more to Lew than all the work he did before or after, and therefore he suffered more by the maltreatment of his work by the Yale University Press when they published the second edition than he had ever suffered before. But I don't want to anticipate events. I shall describe them chronologically and thus make it easier for the reader to understand how the book was created, how many difficulties there were to overcome until it was finally printed, and the real suffering Lew had to go through when he saw Human Action, the most important contribution of his created life, mutilated in its second edition.

2:00Lew's first contact with Yale University Press involved his omnipotent government, and he was directed to Yale by Henry Hazlitt. When I look through the files, I see more clearly than ever how much Henry Hazlitt has done, and is still doing to spread my husband's ideas. In the first years of our stay in America, Harry, himself a busy and hardworking man, read all of Lew's manuscripts and corrected them, a huge task. Hazlitt shared my husband's One day I remember, I was in bed with a sore throat. Lud came into my room with a manuscript under his arm. Read this, he said. I have just finished a book. It was Omnipotent Government.

2:46It was handwritten. I read it without a break from beginning to end, and I immediately knew it would be its success. If I could read a book of his, spellbound, without being able to stop, the public would In April 1943, Haslett wrote to Lew, The Yale University Press has expressed an interest in seeing your manuscript. I suggest that you send it to Mr. Eugene Davidson at the Yale University Press. Lew did as he was advised, and a friendly and congenial relationship between Lew and Davidson soon developed. Once a month they met, usually for lunch, to discuss their publishing plans. Davidson wrote Haslett thanking him on December 16, 1943. Yesterday, Professor von Mises was here, in New Haven, settling the final details of his manuscript. Needless to say, we all feel the book will be a highly important and challenging contribution to present-day thought. We are immensely grateful to you for the share you have had in its completion.

3:44Norman V. Donaldson, director of the Yale University Press, shared Davidson's enthusiasm. Four days later, Donaldson wrote to Lou, It was fine that you could come up to New Haven and that we were able to accomplish so much. I do not need to tell you again that I have the highest hope for the book. On January 24, 1944, Davidson wrote, The more I've been thinking about your views about bureaucracy, the more it has seemed to me that we ought to discuss very seriously the possibility of your writing them up in book form. Again and again I find myself remembering your vivid description of the branch office of the Yale University Press as compared with that of the Internal Revenue Service. And I'd be very much mistaken if a great many people wouldn't find that kind of statement clarifying their opinions.

4:30January 31st, Lew answered Davidson, I am seriously considering your suggestion to write a small book on the economic and social problems of bureaucracy. It is a subject very tempting to me, and I think of real interest to a large public. Very quickly, on February 2nd, 1944, came Davidson's answer, I am glad to know that you are giving serious consideration to the idea of writing a short book on bureaucracy. I'm glad to hear the proofs, Omnipotent Government. We're in such good shape, and we're much nearer to publication. The choice for a subtitle for Omnipotent Government created some difficulties. Davidson proposed to meet on February 16th for lunch. We can discuss the subtitle and the bureaucracy book, and I hope we can report progress in both instances.

5:16At this luncheon, Lew must have agreed to write bureaucracy, for on March 1st, 1944, Davidson wrote to Lew, Both George Day, George Parmley Day, Chairman of the Board, and Norman Donaldson were delighted to hear that you thought well of the idea of going ahead with the book on bureaucracy. And on March 3rd he wrote again, I'm delighted to be able to tell you that our committee has been glad to approve our commissioning the book on bureaucracy. We all look forward to the successful outcome of this new venture. On June 2nd, 1944, Davidson could acknowledge receipt of the manuscript and wrote, The manuscript This seems fine to me. In fact, I think we have quite a book here. I wanted to get this word of my own enthusiasm for the new child off to you as quickly as possible.

6:02Omnipotent Government and Bureaucracy were the first books Lew had written in English, and the public response and the reviews were excellent. But these two books were only the beginning of the immense output of his writing in the United States. From the beginning, he was determined to revise National Economy for an English-speaking public. In December 1944, he sent Davidson this following summary of Nationale Economie. My objective in writing the treaties, Nationale Economie, Theorie des Handlungs und Wirtschaftens, was to provide a comprehensive theory of economic behavior, which would include not only the economics of a market economy, free enterprise system, System, but no less the economics of any other thinkable system of social cooperation, be socialism, interventionism, corporatism, and so on.

6:54Furthermore, I deemed it necessary to deal with all of these objections, which from various points of view, for instance, of ethics, psychology, history, anthropology, ethnography, biology, have been raised against the soundness of economic reasoning and the validity of the and the methods heretofore applied by the economists of all schools and lines of thought. Only such an exhaustive treatment of all critical objections can satisfy the exacting reader and convince him that economics is a science both conveying knowledge and able to guide conduct. The book starts accordingly from a general theory of human action, of which the behavior commonly called economic is only a special case. analyzes the fundamental epistemological problems of the social sciences and determines the role assigned in their framework to economics.

7:46On the basis of these more general investigations, it then proceeds to a more thorough treatment of all problems of economics. The English language edition will not be a simple translation of the book published in German in Geneva in 1940. Besides the revision of the whole text, which will involve entirely rewriting some chapters, Other important changes seem to be necessary in order to adapt the book better to the intellectual climate of America. In fact, an American reader approaches the economic problems from a different angle than the German reader, who is more or less under the spell of Hegelianism, the Nazi philosophy and other isms, fortunately less popular in this country. It is, for instance, superfluous to America to refute the spurious doctrines of Werner Sombart and Ottmar Spann.

8:34The treatise is purely scientific and certainly not a popular book. However, as it does not use any technical terms, but those precisely defined and explained, it can be understood by every educated man. It is true that the public is at present not much interested in reading ponderous economic books, but the wide response which works discussing the most complicated questions of physics, biology, and the philosophy and epistemology of the natural scientists have found among our contemporaries, and Temporaries proves that this lack of interest is not due to an aversion to occupation with intricate studies. It is very likely that the great issue of post-war reconstruction will stimulate interest in a book which deals exhaustively with such problems as prices, monopoly, money and credit, the business cycle and unemployment, and discusses thoroughly all proposals for an economic and social reform.

9:29On December 28, Davidson thanked my husband and asked for the amount of advance he would need to do the book. And Davidson continued, I can then take up the whole matter with the members of our executive committee soon after the first of the year. On January 15, 1945, Davidson wrote to Hazlitt, Mr. von Mises may have told you that we have discussed the possibility of his translating and partly rewriting his book National Economy. It would be a very real help if you could give us a statement of the book's importance. In order for our committee to approve a project of this size, they will want to be convinced of the width and depth and fundamental character of the contribution. My reason, of course, for writing this letter to you is that we greatly value your judgment, and are in your debt for having introduced von Mises to us in the first place.

10:17Haslett answered Davidson on January 18, 1945, referring him to men who knew Lew's work and It might be worth writing to some economists who may know this particular book, or who knew Mises' general work. Among these I may mention Fritz Machlup of the University of Buffalo, Professor Gottfried von Haberler, now at Harvard University, Dr. B. H. Beckert of Columbia, once a student of Mises, Professor John B. Van Sickle of Vanderbilt University, who I believe was also once a pupil of Mises, Professor B. M. Anderson of the University of California at Los Angeles, who is familiar with Mises' work, especially on monetary theory, Garrett Garrett National Industrial Conference Board, and if you think there is time to reach them, Professors Lionel Robbins and F. A. von Hayek of the London School of Economics.

11:13On January 19, 1945, Mr. Davidson received this letter from Benjamin Anderson. In regard to your request about von Mises' Nationale Economie, my own belief that it is important that it be published here is based on my knowledge of all the work of von Mises that has been published or translated into English, as well as the knowledge I have gained from conversations with him. I would like to say that, in my opinion, excellent as the two books are that Yale University Press has already published, the works that hitherto have been translated out of the original German are even better and more important. They are his works on socialism, an economic and sociological analysis, and The Theory of Money and Credit. The first of these volumes was the first Mises volume I had ever read. It struck me as by far the most profound and This is an important critique of the whole theory and implications of socialism that has ever been written, not excluding the classic work of Boehm-Bawerk, which was narrower in scope.

12:14Mises' Theory of Money and Credit, Professor Lionel Robbins of the London School of Economics wrote in his introduction, has long been regarded as the standard textbook on the subject in continental circles. Natunat economy is von Mises' book on general economic principles. It is the central trunk, so to speak, of which the subject discussed in his book on money and his book on socialism are merely the branches. It is the fundamental theory of which the conclusions in the books on socialism and money are the corollaries. It is many years since a first-rate comprehensive book on basic economic principles has appeared in English. I think, therefore, that a book by von Mises, translated and brought up to date, would have a very important effect on economic thought in America.

13:01On February 1st, 1945, Lew had a letter from Professor Hayek, in which Hayek informed him that he would be lecturing in April at Columbia, Chicago, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Stanford Universities, and would see us the first days of April. Lew wrote to Hayek on February 23rd, The news of your impending lecture tour is very gratifying. It is almost a public sensation. You probably do not realize how great the success of your book is, The Road to Serfdom, and how popular you are in this country. The Yale Press plans to publish a revised English edition of my Natuna economy. I have already started to write it. But as the book is rather voluminous and its publication involves a considerable investment, the Press's new board On July 1945, Lew sent Yale University Press's Donaldson another explanatory letter about about National Economy, telling him the German language edition of my National Economy published in 1940 in Switzerland has 756 pages. For the English edition I am trying to eliminate

14:17all critical references to European doctrines unknown or long since discarded in the Anglo-Saxon countries. But on the other hand, I must deal more thoroughly than I did in the original edition with doctrines popular in America, especially with the Keynes-Hansen approach. I think these changes will shorten the length of the manuscript as compared with the 1940 text. I know very well that conciseness is one of the main virtues in a book, and I am eager to do my best, but a treatise dealing with the whole concept of economic problems must be more voluminous than a monograph. On May 7, 1948, the Yale University Press acknowledged receipt of parts of the manuscript. Eugene Davidson wrote, The new section is here and I am glad to see you are close to the goal now. Norman Donaldson has just reminded me of a serious oversight on our part, that we were to pay you as each section of the manuscript is received and approved. That clause in the contract completely slipped everyone's attention here, and please let me know how you would like the matter handled. That is, how you would prefer to have the installments reach you from here on. As a possibility, I would suggest that we make a lump payment for the months that have passed, and then continue according to schedule.

15:29Lew answered on May 12, 1948, Thanks for your letter of May 7. I fully agree with your suggestion and leave the determination of the amount of the lump sum payment for the months past to your discretion. Nothing can prove more clearly how much the work meant to Lew, how little he cared for money, how completely he forgot about himself than these two letters. By the spring of 1949 the printing of Human Action was well on its way. Note that printing of Human Action was well on its way. Davidson supervised everything. Not the slightest detail was unimportant to him. He wanted a perfect book and a satisfied author. He even sent Lew a proof of the binding of the book for his approval. On May 31, 1949, Norman Donaldson wrote to Lew, Advanced copies of your Human Action have now reached us, and we have sent one copy to you. Our probable publication date is September 14. I hope you are pleased with the way the

16:24May the book has turned out. It is a big, handsome volume and looks all of the $10 price that we are placing on it. May I take this occasion to extend to you my personal congratulations on your successful completion of this immensely important piece of work. Lew immediately confirmed receipt of the advance copy and thanked Donaldson. On June 7, 1949 Donaldson answered, It is a great pleasure to have your note in response to your first copy of Human Action. We are delighted that you are so enthusiastic over the way the book looks. On September 14, 1949, Human Action was published, and the book created a tremendous impression all over the country. Almost a hundred review copies were sent out, which may seem a small number in comparison to the 200 copies or more that publishers are sending out these days.

17:12On October 10, 1949, Donaldson wrote Lew, orders are keeping up splendidly and we are today ordering a third printing. That was three and a half weeks after publication. For the first time, life looked more hopeful to Lew. For years he had worked hard, in spite of his career in Europe, his excellent reputation, his respected writings, he had not found the His financial position was, to say the least, modest and insecure, but Human Action was even more of a success than his two previous English books. Yale University Press did its utmost to answer all the inquiries about foreign translations. The book has now been published in Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese editions. I was told that Lou's most ardent readers and admirers have always been in the Spanish-speaking countries.

18:04countries. Apparently, the more subjugated a country is, the deeper the longing for freedom. In the summer of 1983, the French translation by Professor Raoul Audouin was ready for publication and is now in the process of being printed. On January 9, 1950, Mr. Davidson informed Lou, the Book of the Month Club will list Human Action in the back part of its monthly bulletin. This is, technically, I believe, known as the alternate selection which may may be chosen by the Book of the Month Club subscribers in place of the Book of the Month. This was, of course, very good news. Gradually the reviews appeared in the newspapers and the magazines. Lew was never offended or hurt by an unfavorable review, if they were based on knowledge and understanding.

18:51The more they attack an author, he used to say, the more curious they make the public. The only deadly attack is silence. Following the publication of Human Action, Yale University Press published a new, enlarged edition of Socialism, which was first published in Germany in 1922 under the title Gehman-Werstaff. In 1953, Yale printed a new, enlarged edition of The Theory of Money and Credit, followed in 1957 by Lew's Theory and History, an interpretation of social and economic evolution. Next to Human Action, this book meant the most to Lew among his own writings. All these books were translated into foreign languages, which meant a good study income for the Yale Press.

19:36On May 15, 1959, there was a short notice in the New York Times reporting that Norman V. Donaldson, director of the Yale University Press since 1945, will become chairman of its governing board on July 1. George Parmley Day, the present chairman, will become chairman emeritus. Chester B. Kerr, secretary of the press since 1949, will succeed Mr. Donaldson as director. Eugene Davidson was not mentioned. He left Yale Press soon after to become its chief editor of Modern Age, an intellectually stimulating quarterly magazine. These changes completely altered Lew's relations with the press and brought the beginning of the greatest period of frustration he had ever suffered. I know of only two crises in Lew's life that so emotionally upset him that his physical well-being was affected.

20:27The first one came shortly after we were married. Lew received a letter in Geneva dated Vienna, July 29, 1938, which stated, based on paragraph 4, section 1 of the Code for Reorganization for the Austrian Civil Functionaries, dated May 31, 1938, page 607, You are dismissed. This dismissal goes into effect with the day of receipt of this letter. No appeal is allowed against this dismissal. This from his native country after 27 years of devoted service as legal advisor and financial expert of the Chamber of Commerce in Vienna. But it was not altogether unexpected. Lew had foreseen the actions of the Nazis. He was much younger then and could recover from it. The second crisis came when the second edition of Human Action was in preparation.

21:18Human Action had been recognized as one of the great books of all time. After many years In the years of hard work, fighting against odds with tremendous courage, Lew felt firm ground under his feet, and he looked forward with great anticipation to the new edition. But complaints against the press were coming in from all sides. Human Action had disappeared from bookstores, the second revised edition was delayed from month to month, and inquiries from readers were not being answered by the press. Even Lew's letters were not answered. He did not get the proofs in time to make the index, nor was he given the date of publication. They did not even send him a complimentary author's copy. In short, they treated the author and his work as they might have treated a young high school boy who timidly had sent him his first literary output. Finally, the long-awaited new edition of Human Action appeared.

22:08It was a shock to everyone. Henry Hazlitt, in Managing a Masterpiece, an article in the The Press does not honor Professor Mises in this new edition, and it does not honor itself. The new edition is a typographical disgrace. The 1949 edition was originally priced at $10. The revised edition is offered at $15, yet qualitatively it is cheaper in every respect. respect. It is full of misprints. On page 322, four lines are omitted. Page 468 is missing altogether. Page 469 is printed twice. On page 563, two paragraphs are transposed. On page 615, eight lines are wrong. The running heads that appeared at the top of each page of the 1949 edition are all gone.

23:00In belated reparation, the Yale University Press has printed errata pages, although they are not bound in, but these make wholly inadequate amends for an inexcusable printing job. On page after page, one finds some paragraphs printed in a comparatively light type, and others offered in a blacker, thicker type that can only be described as at least quasi-bold-faced. The reader will inevitably assume that this marked contrast is intentional, and that the author meant to give special emphasis to the passages printed in accidental bold. I started to note merely the pages on which the contrast in type between various paragraphs was particularly glaring, and got a list of seventy. I leave it to the Yale Press to explain the technical reasons for the type contrasts.

23:45I have said nothing about the uncountable instances in which whole pages of causey boldface are found on opposite pages of lighter type. This must irritate any reader sensitive to typographical tidiness, but it is at least less likely to mislead him into supposing that changes in emphasis are intentional. What possible human explanation can there be for this typographical botch, which would disgrace a third-rate commercial publisher? Who read galley proofs? Who saw page proofs? Who let this mess pass? I asked Professor Mises what light he could throw on the matter. He was able to supply very little because the publishers had been extraordinarily reticent. It appears that, in order to do as cheap a job as possible, the press has resorted to some mixture of photo offset and reset never tried before.

24:34When Dr. Mises asked for page proofs, they were denied for mechanical reasons. When he protested, Chester Kerr, director of the press, replied on January 22, 1963, We are entirely willing to take responsibility for seeing that the new edition of Human Action is printed without error. I am confident that you will have no cause to regret not having seen page proofs. When the first copies were sent out to the distributors, the author did not receive one. The press has conceded in a letter of September 30th that the general quality of the work is undeniably below our customary standard. But it apparently does not intend to do anything but go on selling the new edition at $15. The least reparation that could be made to the author and to the readers of Human Action would be to order the press to start on a new edition immediately, instead of waiting till the botched present edition is exhausted, and meanwhile to sell copies of the present edition at a cut price

25:33in candid recognition of their defectiveness. And the final question. Why, in a press that has shown itself capable of producing first-rate work, did this particular book go wrong? Do the present editors of the Yale University Press, who are not those who originally accepted the book, know that this is the most important work on general economic theory that has appeared in our generation? They know it is commercially profitable. They know it sold six printings and brought in revenues from translation and quotation. But if they had any idea of its true greatness, if they even had any real respect for its author and its readers, if they had any respect for their press's own reputation, would they have permitted such a slovenly addition to go out under its imprint?

26:19I was with Lew during all those days of upset. No one else will know what he went through at that time, for he was not a man to show his feelings in public. Outsiders may have considered the misprinting of Human Action an episode in the life of a great man, accepted and forgotten. But it was not so. It was the only time in his life that he had sleeping problems, though he steadfastly refused to take any pills. He was angry. It was an ice-cold, quiet anger directed against what he felt was an unknown enemy at Yale University Press, menacing his great book, his creative strength, his very existence. and his composure after he signed a new contract with Regnari and saw the active interest that Henry Regnari took in bringing out a new edition of Human Action, and when I noticed that Lew's sleep was sound and regular, as in former years, I knew he got back his philosophical inner balance, but he never forgot this traumatic experience, nor have I.

27:18The depth of Lew's feeling is revealed in this letter he sent to a friend in December 1963. You are perfectly right. The typographical makeup of the new revised edition of my book, Human Action, as published by the Yale University Press, is a shocking scandal. Never before has any decent publisher dared to bring out such a defective product. There is, first of all, the strikingly perceptible difference in the heaviness of the impression between the passages that have been retained unchanged from the first edition and those that have been altered or added. With the former the print is darker, with the latter it is lighter. This must necessarily give the reader the erroneous idea that this difference means something, that the author wanted to make some distinction between the content of the lighter and that of the darker paragraphs or lines. The book is full of misprints. One page was entirely omitted, another was printed twice, paragraphs were transposed, others were left out. The text is marred by

28:16by Blurs and other marks that impair its readability, especially as many of them look like periods, accents, or other signs of punctuation. There are no running heads, and there are many other minor defects that disfigure the book. There are two ways open for the explanation of this disgraceful case of botry. It was either unintentional or intentional. If we were to assume that it was unintentional, we would imply that all the people who cooperated in the production are clumsy, inept, inefficient and negligent in the highest degree. Against such an assumption stands the fact that the press published and still publishes books of normal quality. To a professor who complained to the press about the poor appearance of the book and told them that their reputation will suffer, the press answered, September 12th, that its reputation does not depend on this one instance, but on the accumulative flow of high-quality work which comes from us steadily.

29:11Thus the press itself comes near to admitting that its failure to produce the new edition of Human Action as a book of normal American shape was the result of a purposeful design to prejudice both the circulation of the book and the reputation and material interests of the author. The present management of the press regrets, for political reasons, the fact that their predecessors published my books. They are especially angry about the great success of Human Action. If they had any sense of propriety at all, they would openly tell the author that they do not want any longer to publish his books, and that he is free to look for another publisher. When in the course of seeing the book through the various phases of publication, I noticed how the press insidiously delayed from month to month the publication of the new edition of Human Action, and how it muddled the printing presses, I suggested this solution to them.

30:03But the press does not want to lose the very lucrative rights to Human Action, while the This, as it told the representative of a distributor who ordered copies of the books, loses money on about 90% of its publications, Human Action sold six printings and brought in revenues from translation and quotation. It was a very profitable job for the press. The press wants to make money on my books and at the same time to punish the author as well as the readers by giving them the most wretched service. Without informing me, the press chose for for the publication of the new edition of Human Action, a process devised by an incompetent bungler, and never tried before. The inadequacy of this procedure delayed the production for many months, and finally gave the press pretext to deny me, for mechanical reasons, the right to see the page proofs.

30:53When I protested, Mr. Chester Kerr, the director of the press, replied on January 22nd, Second, we are entirely willing to take responsibility for seeing that the new edition of Human Action is printed without error. I am confident that you will have no cause to regret not having seen page proofs. It is obvious that the press withheld for me the page proofs because it wanted to bring out a defective book. And when the book was finally ready and the first copies were sent out to the distributors, the press tried to keep the fact secret from me and did not even send me, the author, a copy. The press cannot help admitting, in a letter to my attorney on September 30th, that the general quality of the work is undeniably below our customary standard, but it stubbornly refuses to substitute a new normal quality book for this scandalous botchery.

31:42In writing this letter I am not concerned with the reaction of the Yale University Press. What I do want to do is thank all those who, in reading the new revised edition of Human Action, take no notice of the glaring deficiencies of its printing, and thus thwart the heinous machinations of the simpletons who think that they can refute an author by mangling the outward appearance of his book. The villain in a Perry Mason story is easy to detect. Who is always the one whom you suspect least and whom the author treats with a certain indulgent negligence? But who was the guilty party causing the unbelievably bad printing job at Yale University Press? Whom prepared the second edition of Human Action? Who wanted to harm my husband by preventing, with this unbelievably bad printing, the book from being read?

32:32Was Eugene Davidson the only person whose support had brought Human Action to life? I don't know any other time in my husband's life when he had to consult a lawyer, except in 1938 when he needed legal help to obtain my documents from Vienna. It was claimed that no lawyer ever would win a case against the Yale University Press. If this was the case, why was the press so eager, after all the bad publicity it had, to hush-hush the affair and settle with my husband's lawyers out of court, giving in to almost all his demands? These demands never involved any money, as is clearly seen from the foregoing letter. And why, since the case was so strong and the right so clearly on my husband's side, did the lawyers give in without trying their case before a jury?

33:19The mystery is unsolved to this day. The Yale University Press answered all charges with deadly silence. That was their defense. Yale University Press is a faithless organization that is so huge, so powerful, that if attacked, The responsible party can hide unrecognized behind the impenetrable walls of the institution, as in the past warriors might have hidden behind the ramparts of a fortress. But one thing is sure, the ideological differences that may have existed between Ludwig von Mises and the Yale University Press did not hinder the press from taking its cut. All through the years the press insisted on its contract and its percentage. Every year, when the Yale Statement arrived, Lew read it then gave it to me without a word.

34:06But the shrug of his shoulders and his slight gesture of contempt revealed his feelings more clearly than words ever could.